New York to Dallas

like, mag to infinity on you.”
    “Maybe Dad will give me an advance. Mom won’t.” She rolled her lively green eyes. “All I’ll get from her is—”
    “The Lecture,” Simka finished, rolling her eyes in solidarity. “You could tag him up, show him how super-frosted you look in it.”
    “Too easy to say no over the ’link. Sheesh, that lady’s still hawking us. It’s not like we’re shoplifters. Here, take my picture.” She handed Simka her ’link. “Then I can go home, soften him up, show him when he’s in a really good mood.”
    “But somebody might buy it before you give him the works.”
    “I’ve got a little left. I can put it on hold.”
    She angled herself, smiled brilliantly for the shot, a pretty young girl with long brown hair, temporarily streaked with vivid purple, which had earned her The Lecture just that morning.
    In fact, the hair deal had meant she’d had to wheedle her butt off for this trip to the mall, and she’d only copped it because her mother was shopping, too.
    And she had to meet The Warden—her most current term for her mother—at nine forty-five on the dot right under the clock tower. And tomorrow was a free day and everything with no school due to teacher-planning sessions.
    She’d wanted to shop with Sim, go to the vids, have pizza after, but no . Home by ten, in bed by ten-thirty.
    You’d think she was three instead of thirteen.
    Mothers were such a pain.
    “I’m going to put it on hold. We’ve still got a half-hour before we have to meet The Warden.”
    “Check. I’m going to try on this top and the pants, too. I’ll come out so you can tell me the abso-total truth about how they look.”
    “I will, but I already know they’ll look complete on you. Cha.”
    Darlie hurried to the counter, gave the watchful clerk a haughty stare as she paid the holding charge. She started back toward the dressing area when a fabo skirt caught her eye.
    “Excuse me.”
    Startled, Darlie jumped back. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
    “I’m sorry.” Sarajo—now Sandra Millford—put on an easy smile. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wondered if you could help me out. My niece is about your size, your coloring, your age. Fifteen?”
    Flattered, Darlie lied cheerfully. “Yeah.”
    “Do you think she’d like this? I want to get her something special for her birthday next week.” Sarajo held up a pink party dress.
    “Oh, wow. I was looking at that before. It’s so, just so . It’s way expensive.”
    “She’s my favorite niece. Can I just hold it up against you, to see how she might look?”
    “Sure. Oh, it’s just frosted extremely.”
    “You think?” Sarajo slid the pressure syringe under the material, shifting as she’d practiced to shield the movement from view. She jabbed it quickly into the side of Darlie’s throat.
    “Ow. What was—”
    “Must be a pin in it.”
    She watched the girl’s eyes glaze.
    “I don’t guess it suits her after all.” Supporting Darlie with one arm, she hung the dress up. “Time to go.” She spoke clearly, smiling, walking the girl out. “School night!”
    “No school tomorrow.” The words slurred.
    “You’re right about that.”
    She walked Darlie toward the south entrance. McQueen picked them up on the way, tucked his arm around Darlie from the other side. “How did the shopping go, ladies?”
    “We had fun,” Sarajo said easily. “But our girl’s not feeling very well. Overtired, I guess.”
    “Aw, well, we’ll be home soon.”
    Looking like a family, they went outside to the lot, McQueen jamming security as they went. Even as Simka came out of the dressing room to show off her outfit, they lifted Darlie into the van.
     
     
    Eve walked into the shop with Roarke. It was a ground-level shop in a three-level mall. Dozens of ways in, she’d already noted, dozens of ways out.
    Bree broke out of a huddle of cops, hurried to her.
    “Darlie Morgansten, thirteen, brown and green, five-three, a hundred and ten. She was with her friend.” She gestured toward another girl, sitting on the floor, crying. “The friend was trying something on in the dressing room. When she came out, Darlie was gone. They were to meet Darlie’s mother, Iris Morgansten, at twenty-one forty-five. The mother”—she gestured again to a woman talking rapidly to Bree’s partner—“was shopping elsewhere in the mall.”
    Bree took a breath.
    “One of the clerks noticed Darlie with a woman, assumed it was her mother. They